SECRET MEMO

Trump Clears Path to Send Non-Criminal Migrants to Guantanamo Bay

The agreement is in stark contrast to Trump’s vow to hold only “the worst” offenders at the naval base.

The Trump administration has created broad enough rules around holding migrants at Guantanamo Bay that officials could be allowed to send non-criminal detainees there, a government memo obtained by CBS News reveals. This is in stark contrast to a vow to hold only “the worst” offenders at the naval base. The president’s aggressive crackdown on immigration required officials to convert facilities inside the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, into holding sites for migrants living in the U.S. illegally. In January, Trump claimed that this would apply to only “high-priority criminal aliens.” However, an undisclosed agreement between the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense suggests that the Trump administration granted officials a much wider range of discretion on who deserves to be sent. In fact, the memo doesn’t even include any mention of criminality assessment. Instead, the memo, signed March 7 by top officials at the DHS and Pentagon, says departments agree the base can house migrants with final deportation orders who have “a nexus to a transnational criminal organization (TCO) or criminal drug activity.” Here, “nexus” was satisfied by an array of conditions: If the migrant is part of a transnational criminal group or if they paid someone “to be smuggled into the United States.” The latter included asylum-seekers or anyone, regardless of visa status, whose entry is unclear.